


The Distinct Imprints of Love

by YesBothWays



Series: The Love Story of Carol Aird and Therese Belivet [3]
Category: Carol (2015)
Genre: F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 12:07:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5927787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YesBothWays/pseuds/YesBothWays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse into Carol and Therese's life together several years down the road from the events of the film and the stories, "Recitative," and "It Comes In All Forms."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Distinct Imprints of Love

For, to create, one must decide -- the cells must decide -- what form,  
What colour, what sex, how many petals, five, or more than five,  
Or less than five. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves. ~Audre Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" 

 

            Therese gently opened the front door to Carol's apartment, trying to remain quiet enough so that no one in the building would notice how late it was when one of them first opened the door. She preferred that Carol's neighbors not know that neither of them had woken until ten a.m., even on a Saturday morning. She found the milk bottle and the paper tucked together right at the corner of the doorframe. Both had already been moved away from the front steps, where their neglect would more likely have been noticed.

            She took both inside and softly closed the door. She felt grateful to Sam, the solitary young man who lived in the basement of Carol's apartment building, and no doubt the person who had moved the paper and milk. He played the saxophone at clubs and was out at all hours, and if he was about early, he would bring these to their door this way when he picked up his own. Therese thought the gesture and even the way he tipped his cap at them meant that Sam knew that Carol and Therese were lovers, and he tried to do little things like this to help them remain unnoticed, to stave a little edge off of the gossip in the building. People had whispered to her in the halls that Sam was mixed race, a little old for a still single man, too quiet, and strange. Therese loved him as much as one could love a relative stranger. He was her favorite neighbor at both her place and Carol's by far.

            Before she put the milk in the fridge, Therese poured herself a glass. She glanced over the headlines on the front page, too tired to really read any of them. They were rarely a surprise after spending the work week at _The Times_. Having done her only civic duty on Saturdays, Therese came back to Carol's bedroom. The curtains were drawn, and the sun was bright enough to illuminate the room despite them. She looked at Carol still deeply asleep in the bed, turned over onto her side with her back curled slightly. Therese found that she loved the line of her. She loved so dearly the way that photography had trained her eye to catch on the beauty in the world. And she had yet to notice anything more beautiful than Carol.

            As she drank from her glass, the milk felt uniquely wholesome. She guessed that she would have become hungry at some point last night and simply missed it. She had always found she could easily replace a meal with wine and dancing, though she did not do that often anymore. The hard glass felt smooth against her palm and reminded her of the simple, curved glass with no stem that she drank red wine from the night before. She was lucky not to feel sick this morning. They stopped early, that was the only way she had gotten away with drinking as much as she did with no regrets.

            Their friend Angie had invited them out to a dance held at a friend's house. They were a strange crowd, mixed in both age and class, a lot of artists and bohemians. Their hosts were two women who had invited only people they knew other than Carol and Therese. Still, Therese found it remarkable when she saw the two women kiss one another in their living room without hiding it from anyone. As Angie introduced her to people, she found there were other lesbians there and a handful of gay men, and people like Peggy who did not fit into any category she knew. She found herself not knowing quite how to act in a room where she had nothing to hide. Conversation came easier. She even found that she could stand in one place and not mind when people came up to her just to say hello and have a brief, friendly chat. Carol seemed delighted by the atmosphere of the party. Therese could see practically everyone there becoming enamored of her within an hour, as she made her way around the place and charmed them. Carol surprised her later in the evening by crossing the room and asking Therese to dance.

            She could remember at first glancing around the room nervously. She could hardly believe that they could dance together in front of anyone, much less everyone. There were other couples of the same sex dancing. All the wine she had been drinking sang in her body, as if she were made of the vibration of sound coming from the fancy record player herself. Usually, that would have put her on edge, knowing she would lack her usual guardedness and might make a mistake with Carol that would give them away. Things might get dangerous if she did. Tonight, she got to put that aside and let herself simply feel that all the wine pouring through her body made her less inhibited than usual in order to dance easily with Carol. She felt like a song of celebration rang in her own heart in that moment, when Carol first drew her out into a space on the floor and got them going, then looked her over to make sure she was really all right with this.

            Therese remembered smiling so much as they danced that her cheeks would have ached without the changes the wine worked in her body. They might have danced for an hour, maybe more. Carol wore pink that evening, and Therese could still see the colors in her mind, swirling in the crowded room, that pale pink of her clothes and richer yellow of Carol's hair streaked through the murky colors of the room moving around the two of them.

            At some point, Therese finally got tripped up. Carol drew her forward, right up against her body to steady her. Therese found her hands on Carol's chest and felt herself become still, almost stunned. She knew their breath and their hearts must have been racing from all their dancing. The feeling between the two of them seemed absolute, encompassing. She could no more resist this than she could the pull of gravity. She remembered saying without a thought and almost desperately to Carol, "Take me home." Her mind flashed over the curious lack of awareness she had over how loudly she had spoken this and whether anyone had overheard, because tonight it did not matter in the least.

            In response to this, Carol left her immediately. She retrieved their purses and somehow managed a tactful flurry of kind farewells without so much as pausing. She nearly ushered Therese out the door and into a taxi cab. Therese had not said goodbye to anyone, she realized in the cab, but it did not matter. She let the lights of the city wash over her as she leaned her cheek against the cool window. She remembered distinctly the sounds from the scrape of their shoes on the mat inside Carol's door and her keys hitting the table. And then Carol had her in her arms and was kissing her.

            The wine had altered Therese's body during the party like a weather front moving through and dragging along a change of temperature, a gradual and yet suddenly recognized change that pervaded the entire experience. Carol's kiss altered her deeply in a single instant. She felt as if it broke her body open like a shattered bottle of perfume. She thought she would spill out everywhere to fill and stain the room, except that Carol kept her held together, carefully and firmly encircled by her arms. Carol had moved her to the couch last night, kneeling down and making love to her there, before she finally took them into the bedroom.

            In the quiet morning, Therese found that the bed still possessed an expansive and disorienting quality, held over from the night before. She put her empty glass on the beside table. She looked over and saw the silk handkerchief on the table at Carol's side of the bed. This was wrapped around a polished, marble wand made with a gentle S-curve like a short piece of ribbon lying on a table. Her body ached with the memory of the feel of Carol touching her inside and working this with the most delicate precision. She remembered Carol's utter focus being held on her as she did. She felt heavy and open still from so many hours of making love the night before. She took her robe off again and slid in under the sheet and covers on the bed. Carol did not even stir, and Therese wondered what time it had been when they finally stopped making love and got to sleep. She had wondered whether she would be able to see the sun lighting the very edges of the night sky were she to go to the window. She had been too tired to care and fallen asleep without glancing at the clock either.

            A state of almost dreaming came over her, washed over her with memories of the night before. She lay still and peaceful beside Carol in the stillness that pervaded the room. Carol awoke after perhaps an hour or more. Therese turned to watch her come awake. She smiled when she found Therese in bed beside her and turned over to get a drink of water from her beside table. She leaned back into the pillow on her elbows as she drank. She turned to set the water glass down, then turned back to Therese.

            "Oh my goodness!" Carol said and leaned up some in a sudden movement.

            "What?" Therese said in a voice that sounded distinctly like she had not spoken yet that day and made her try to clear her throat.

            Carol had sat up all the way and leaned in over Therese. Therese tried to open her eyes fully to pay more attention, even though she felt so relaxed she found this rather hard. Carol pulled the sheet down from Therese's back.

            "You're scratched to pieces!" Carol said.

            "Are there marks?" Therese asked.

            "All over," Carol said as she touched Therese's back delicately.

            Therese laughed at this and rubbed her face in the pillow. She found herself delighted by the idea. She had so loved the feel of Carol's nails as they raked over her skin, after she had come over Carol and pressed into her, and then did this over and again for prolonged and completely indistinguishable duration of time. She turned to see Carol looking down at her in clear distress. She pushed herself up onto one elbow.  

            "They don't hurt," Therese said with a slight shrug. "I don't mind."

            Carol made a soft "oh" sound of sympathy and got up quickly to head into the bathroom. Therese let herself sink back down into the pillow. She found herself smiling. She heard the water running for a while in the bathroom. Carol made a sound of tolerating discomfort as she came back out and clicked off the light behind her.

            "How's your head?" Therese asked and turned over to see her.

            She was tipping a brown bottle of peroxide into a white cotton ball on her way back to the bed.  

            "It's fine. My legs are sore," Carol said in a tone of surprise as she sat herself down carefully on the narrow edge of the bed beside Therese.  

            "From dancing?" Therese asked her.

            "I should think not," Carol said in a tone that implied that she thought Therese was making a joke by pretending to be naïve.

            "Oh," Therese said and gave a tiny laugh.

            She remembered Carol's thighs pressing hard against her own hips and how Carol's legs trembled vividly under her hands. Carol laughed a little bit, too, when she realized that Therese had not meant a joke at first. She put the bottle aside.

            "Was I too rough with you?" Therese asked and turned over more to face Carol.  

            "Looks like it was more the other way around," Carol said. She put her hand to Therese's shoulder and said gently, "Here."

            Therese felt cold streaks that would develop slowly after the cotton ball brushed across her back. She felt her body wanting to respond to Carol's touch. Her breath deepened and a vivid tension coalesced in her stomach. She leaned her forehead into the pillow even though she wanted to turn over.

            "Is the skin really broken?" Therese asked in order to get herself to hold still a bit longer so that Carol might finish.

            "It's hard to tell," Carol said as she concentrated. "Does it sting?"

            "Nope," Therese said.

            Therese turned over then and got her hands on Carol's waist at both sides.

            "Let me finish, you naughty thing," Carol said.

            "I can't help it. You just… bring it out of me," Therese said as she pulled the two of them closer together.

            She leaned in and kissed Carol's neck. She felt one of Carol's hands grasping her shoulder. When they had kissed several times, Therese realized that Carol was reluctant to relinquish the cotton ball in the other hand. She turned to the side to let Carol finish, since she was clearly in earnest about tending to the scratches she had left on her back. Carol dropped the cotton ball aside on the bedside table as soon as she finished. As Therese turned to her, she slid her hand along the side of Therese's neck and drew her into a kiss.

            As Therese began to kiss her neck, Carol felt herself struggle between the pull of her own desire as it came to the surface and a strong self-consciousness. She held Therese's shoulders gingerly and still pictured the marks on her back in her mind. Therese put her hand around Carol's thigh and pressed her fingers gently into the muscles of her leg, which made the feel of the sore ones stand out distinctly. She felt her legs wanting to tremble now from the sheer immensity of the sensations that unraveled from inside her body under Therese's touch. Therese moved her hand slowly up Carol's thigh to find if she wanted her to touch her again, even so soon as this. And Carol found herself slipping back willingly in order to lie down again. She could feel that they were both made sensitive by the night before and relative lack of sleep. They handled one another with great care, as they made love to one another again.  

            Afterwards, as Carol ran her hands through Therese's hair and held Therese close to her own body, Therese found herself overcome with astonishment that she could be satisfying to Carol. She moved her hands over Carol's body in their embrace and could feel how deeply she had affected her. She thought over a conversation she had some months before with the women at work. They were standing around the office after hours, smoking and drinking all together, and the others were discussing how men would pursue women aggressively for months and yet only be satisfied in bed with them once or at most a handful of times. They obviously hated this, yet they seemed resolved to it. Therese felt sympathy for them, but she simply could not relate. She was still able to please Carol years after they had first gone to bed together, if anything only more so than in the early days of their relationship.

 

            Carol left the radio on the counter off and ignored her thoughts about a first, morning cigarette. She got Therese to sit while she made them breakfast. She could whip up a meal of scrambled eggs, grilled ham, toast, and coffee all while barely even thinking of the movements she made in order to do it. She leaned to one side and then the other, subtly, to shift the muscles in her legs. The faint stretch felt more of a relief than an agitation. She heard Therese turn over a page of the newspaper a few times.

            She found herself almost shaken now by the profound experience of the night before. She could almost sense the wild abandonment she had felt lurking still inside her, a creature that surfaced during the night with Therese pressing into her as deeply as she could and her own hands moving over Therese's shoulders and back almost desperate to draw her closer. She touched her lips and felt almost drowsy as she remembered this. She felt a bit troubled that was for certain. She did not know why she should find it distressing to be confronted with herself in the morning.

            She remembered a day from a few years before, when she had sat down in front of the fireplace to burn the files that her friend Peggy had stolen and given to her. She had read through them first. More than anything else, the psychologist's notes had remained with her since that day. She wondered how many women had a chance to really see how men in authority were perceiving them, interpreting them.

            That man had real tact, Carol recalled. When they first met, he started them off by getting Carol a drink, casually sitting and crossing his legs, and telling her that he was not there to judge her but to help her gain insights and control over her own situation if she had a mind to do it. He asked her mainly about Harge and candidly questioned her about her experience of Harge as a lover. She found herself defensive, as if she had not yet shaken the instinct to consider the two of them so deeply entwined as to be threatened by this. She found that she did not really care whether he believed her or not as she spoke. Harge was fine. She finally said in a more open attempt to explain it to him from her perspective that Harge was always just fine in bed, where it was just the two of them with no one else there to see or judge anything. And he seemed to understand that somehow. He asked her more frank questions, and Carol felt a bit challenged and answered him just as frankly.

            Reading her own file, Carol saw how an image of her own psyche and corresponding sexuality had formed in this man's mind. At the center was a picture of her having a healthy sexuality, a woman who could orgasm from vaginal penetration nearly every time she made love with her husband. Apparently, he found that an unalterable standard that made her healthy. Some fucking technical detail, as Carol thought of it, that he had fixated upon. And it was not untrue, not a false impression she had given him. When she suspected Harge of having affairs, her main complaint had always been his decline in interest in sex. He possessed a sheer lack of stamina unlike anything she would have experienced herself.

            In the psychologist's files, all the rest of her own story surrounding Abby and Therese had been framed as desperation, seeking the fulfillment of a relationship with a stable and capable husband. Those were her rights, he seemed to think, that had been denied and driven her to near madness. At the time, Carol would have listened to an explanation that claimed she was an alien from space trapped in human form if those colorful fictions might have brought back her daughter. Now, as she stood over the stove, she considered her own experiences of sexual fulfillment. She had imagined as a younger woman that she had gotten lucky in marriage, that she had a perfectly fine sex life where other women's lives were wanting. Those experiences felt shallow and mechanical to her now only after living longer, experiencing more, and, most of all, after finding Therese.

            There was a longing that surfaced in her with Abby, the promise of something entirely profound. Perhaps, after all, that was the best of it. She never would have guessed that then. She had never felt young or unprepared sexually for anything she had known until she was already right in the midst of making love with Therese. There was nothing mechanical about sex between them. Nothing grated and needed to be made to fit together well enough for them to come together in this way. Everything was fluid and moved as a living thing does, responding beautifully and driven by everything from instinct to kindness to artistry. And in five years, those experiences of finding something new and transformative in sex and feeling herself carried along though unprepared still had not reached their limit or end. She had begun to wonder at times if they ever would.

            As she thought over the file she had burned and men like the psychologist who wrote such notes about women, she felt utterly perplexed. She never felt like much of an expert on anything in particular. But she had some level of sense that had proved uncompromising in all situations. And she had to wonder how on earth they could be so confident in what all they knew, when it was clear that they knew absolutely nothing.

            Carol felt a bit hard with these thoughts as she plated their breakfast and brought it to the table. She went and poured herself a cup of coffee. Looking down into her cup, the black coffee seemed too sharp with her body feeling wrung out and vulnerable. She went to the fridge and got some milk to put in her cup. She took a first sip as she crossed the room and felt relieved to find that it was easy to drink.

            "You're quiet this morning," Therese said to her.

            "Oh, I'm just… lost in thoughts," Carol said distractedly.

            She sat down with her cup of coffee and prepared to actually eat the plate of food in front of her. Therese had not started eating yet, and Carol knew that she sat watching her from across the table. As she unfolded her napkin and got her fork, she felt a bit on edge with the feeling of being seen.

            "Was last night too much for you?" Therese asked.

            Carol looked up at her almost automatically. Therese seemed calm and thoughtful. She was wondering what was troubling Carol, trying to intuit what it was, and clearly would have been surprised to find they had finally outdone her in bed. She thought about how she felt in this moment, almost seeing herself from Therese's perspective to gain some insight. She found herself worried suddenly over the idea of losing herself so entirely that she had hurt Therese in bed.  

            "Just feeling remorseful over your injuries," Carol said.

            Curiously, she saw quite clearly that none of her own discomfort was mirrored in Therese's expression.

            "And here I am thinking about how to talk you into photographing them for me," Therese said.

            After a beat passed between them in silence, Carol burst into involuntary laughter. Therese made the softest grin and leaned back in her chair. She seemed to Carol both relaxed and tired still. Therese leaned forward and finally took a first bite of breakfast.

            "This is good," Therese said very clearly savoring the taste of the food.

            Carol smiled at the familiar phrase. She always found it remarkable how Therese could appreciate such small and commonplace gestures as being given a plate of decent food. Such things never seemed to lose their edge of enjoyment and aura of generosity for Therese. She made Carol feel more grateful than she would have on her own for everyday satisfactions and exchanges such as this.

            "I imagine it's hard to feel comfortable when your sexuality has been made the object of scrutiny," Therese said.

            Carol felt a bit astonished by this. At times, Therese seemed nearly capable of reading her thoughts. She watched Carol so carefully and attentively that she could understand subtle differences in her silences and some nuanced language of movement and expression that Carol had never even thought of herself as making before.

            "You think you're too much for me?" Therese said over a bite of food.

            She sat back with her coffee cup in both of her hands. She had a little smirk on her face like she considered this just about the funniest idea in the world. Carol realized that she had thought this same thing about herself and Harge probably a hundred times over the years. She eyed Therese sitting there across from her, all slight and quiet and still dressed in only her robe. She had the distinct air of a nymph, some unearthly creature amused by everything happening around her in the world.

            "Because you know that women are tough as all hell," Therese said.

            She had timed her joke perfectly, and Carol laughed at her. Therese seemed pleased and went back to eating. Carol finally felt herself relax. She began to eat herself and could feel how hungry she really was once she had started. The food seemed particularly delicious as it was seasoned by hunger, as her grandfather would have said.

            After they finished eating, they sat and smoked a cigarette and lingered over another cup of coffee. Carol flipped through the paper, while they talked about lighter things and made one another laugh. They were both looking forward to another night out such as they had shared the night before. Carol thought the atmosphere of the dance was what set the tone of their lovemaking, and she felt that this was nothing to sneeze at. She got a card to write to Angie's friends and went to her coat to find the slip of paper with their address written on it.

            The phone rang as Carol finished her card. Therese dragged it across the table to sign it, as well, as she listened in on the conversation. Carol's voice took on a brassy edge, and she knew that it was Harge. She heard that he was offering Carol Rindy for the day, and she said yes. This week was supposed to be her week with Harge and Alice, her stepmother, until Sunday, and then it would be Carol's week. So this early visit came as a sweet surprise. Therese wondered if Carol would want the day alone with Rindy after all. She thought of heading back to her own apartment to spend a quiet day reading and maybe running over photographs of her own.

            "I hope you don't mind," Carol said as she came back, "But Harge is bringing Rindy by for a while."

            "You want the place to just the two of you?" Therese asked.

            "Not at all," Carol said. "I just don't want to bring you on as an impromptu babysitter as if this is your given, womanly duty."

            Therese laughed.

            "Rindy loves you," Carol said to imply that Therese should stay if she did not want to go.

            "Well, I love her, too," Therese said and felt slightly surprised by Carol's comment. "Imagine being in love with someone and not loving their child."

            Carol turned and gave her a warm look at this sentiment. She came and put her hand on Therese's shoulder. She took the card up from the table out of habit more than anything.

            "I wonder what a little girl of yours would be like," Carol said.

            "Not a little boy?" Therese said.

            "Either one," Carol said lightly.

            "I never really thought about it all that seriously," Therese said. "Is Florence all right?"

            "Oh, yes," Carol said. "It's just her day off. Harge thought it best not to bother her."

            "Does he know that I'm here?" Therese asked.

            "Yes. I made mention of it," Carol said.

            "I'm going to look at this as progress," Therese said.

            "Yes, I think the pissing contest might be finally over," Carol said. "We'll have to wait and see."

            Carol took her card to the mail and went down to meet Harge when he arrived. Therese sat the kitchen table and waited for them. Carol must have told Rindy that Therese was there, because she ran into the kitchen. She was carrying a canvas school bag over her arm.

            "Therese!" Rindy said.

            She brought her bag and sat it on the table in front of Therese. She gave Therese a hug. Therese rubbed her back as they hugged, and Carol came in after her. She watched them with a smile.  

            "I brought three books and paints and modeling clay," Rindy announced with pride.

            "You did?" Therese said. "Oh, we'll be quite busy, then."

            "Do you have any homework we should get out of the way before the fun starts?" Carol asked.

            "No, I did it all last night with Alice," Rindy said.

            "That's very responsible of you," Therese said. "I never did mine that fast."

            "She made us cookies while I worked on it at the table," Rindy told them.

            "Oh, well, maybe that's why," Therese said.

            "I don't remember whether I did mine at all," Carol claimed.

            Rindy thought this was extremely funny for some reason. She started unpacking her bag onto the table. Therese smiled over at Carol.

            "Don't let her have you on," Therese said. "She was at the top of her class all through school, college even."

            "Dad told me that," Rindy said.

            Carol shot Therese a look that clearly said, "Well, what do you know, a promotional," clearly amused by the idea of Harge speaking well about her to Rindy. They shared a prolonged smile over it. She kept quiet, though. She was always kind about Harge with Rindy. She would take pains to highlight his finer qualities, and in that way Therese got some picture of what Carol saw in him those years before. There still wasn't anything Therese could find to like about the man. Abby felt much worse about him and actually used the phrase, "I hate that bastard's guts," once in front of Carol with no reservations at all. Carol had laughed. Still the closest thing to criticism Carol ever offered in front of Rindy was repetition of the simple phrase, "You don't have to agree with everything Dad says," usually when Rindy told a story of Harge getting upset with Rindy over something. Therese asked Carol once whether she was afraid she might give Rindy the false impression that Harge was infallible. Carol had answered her casually that when Rindy was old enough to disagree with him, Carol would listen to her critique, but that it would not go the other way. She said their divorce should speak loudly enough as Rindy aged and understood more.

            They spent a lovely and somewhat quiet afternoon painting, making themselves lunch and then hot chocolate, and reading in the living room. Rindy had brought the last of the books of Narnia, and Therese read aloud to all of them. They hit a chapter's end and Rindy grew restless, so Therese put the book aside. Carol brought out an old sheet to spread across the floor and turned over the large coffee table that sat in front of the couch. Originally, she thought the over-sized table ideal for Therese to use in sorting through piles of her photographs. Months after she had brought it home from the shop, Therese and Rindy were playing a game of imagining as if they were underwater, and Therese taped photographs of the beach on the underside of the table. The game evolved to where being under the table meant they were inside a submarine exploring the vast underwater world. The tales became elaborate and fanned out. Lately, Therese had been keeping copies of _National Geographic_ from the trash bins at work and scouring them for potential sea monsters to add to their collection, as the underside of the table was something like a window onto the world of the ocean nowadays.

            They spent the next hour or so selecting pictures from Therese's magazines, cutting them out, and pasting them on the underside of the table. Carol read out some parts of the articles to them out loud, strange facts about invertebrates and rare aquatic life. Therese helped Rindy to paint around the edges of the new pictures. As Therese grew more absorbed in what they were doing, she felt Carol's attention beginning to stray. She could usually only play at a game with Rindy for about forty-five minutes, then she had to do something else at the same time at the very least. Sure enough, Carol touched Therese's shoulder as she was meticulously cutting out an image of a sea turtle and said she was going to go and start dinner.

            "Should we come help?" Therese asked and touched her hand.

            "No, you two keep busy for as long as the spirit moves you," Carol said.

            When the underside of the table was finished, Therese turned it over for them. They lay on their backs with their heads under the table and their feet up on the couch, as if cramped into a tight, underwater vessel. Their collage looked quite good, and faint smells of paste and paint had an appealing quality to Therese. They ambled over the beginnings of an underwater mission they were imagining on orders to explore an unknown corner of the sea. Therese guided the story at first as they met a family of sea horses and helped retrieve a little one tangled in a floating mass of seaweed.

            "Turn us ninety degrees to the right," Rindy said to Therese.

            "Aye, aye, captain," Therese said.

            She turned them with exaggerated movements and a series of squeaks and false mechanical sounds. They were quiet for a moment. Therese made a gasp.

            "What's that?" Therese said.

            Rindy went quiet as if observing closely. She was working hard at imagining something, Therese could tell. She waited and wondered what it would be.

            "It looks like a squid," Rindy said in almost a whisper.

            "A squid or an octopus?" Therese asked.

            "Too early to tell," Rindy said.

            "Should we get closer to observe?" Therese asked.

            "Not need for that. It's coming this way," Rindy said.

            She made a believable enough gasp that Therese got a thrill from it.

            "An octopus! He's ten times the size I thought up close!" Rindy said.

            "Oh, no!" Therese said. "I hope he's not hungry."

            "He looks hungry," Rindy said with certainty.

            "If we offer him candy, do you think he will go away?" Therese asked.

            "They eat fish!" Rindy said.

            "I hope they only eat fish and not people," Therese said.

            "Not a safe bet," Rindy said in a stern tone and shook her head.

            "Should we run away just in case?" Therese asked.

            "No!" Rindy said. "We have a mission of our own to complete. Mommy can chase him off!"

            "You think so?" Therese asked her with a smile of surprise.

            "Yeah!" Rindy said convinced.

            Therese was trying to decide whether to steer the game in another direction or call Carol to see if she would come and play with them. Carol came into the room having settled everything in the kitchen for the time being. She had heard her name being spoken and part of what was said.

            "Who's that?" Carol said.

            "An octopus with green eyes and purple hair!" Rindy announced with fierce delight.

            "The green-eyed ones are all lily-livered," Carol said in her gruffest tone.

            She lay down on the floor on the other side of the table and slid her head under between Rindy and Therese. She turned to wink a bit at Therese, and Therese let her hand come over her should to touch Carol's hair. Carol and Rindy carried on imagining Carol daunting the octopus, and a terrible battle ensued. Therese could not help but laugh in delight along with Rindy, as Carol grew caught up in their game.

            Therese lay there remembering a story from when Rindy was only four-years-old. She began to grow frightened of the dark in her room. So Carol developed an elaborate ritual of chasing any potential monsters and spooks out with a broom before she shut out the light and left her alone in her bed. She would rattle and rasp the broom under her bed to shoo them out, then rattle it around with a flurry all through her closet. Rindy would laugh with glee and grow slightly wild. But she always settled down more easily afterwards. Therese thought of it as a bit of genius on Carol's part. She loved who she was as a mother as much as in any other part of life.

            Fortunately, Carol had vanquished the menacing octopus before her timer in the kitchen went off. She went to finish up their dinner. She gave them a bit of warning and disrupted the game rather gently when dinner was finished. They all sat down to eat chicken and green bean casserole. Alice came to get Rindy before they were finished, and she came up when she heard they were still eating to wait. She sat with them at the table. She was quiet and uncomfortable, but Therese always thought she was quite nice. She clearly loved Rindy even if it was with a tentative, almost anxious kind of love. Therese noticed how Alice always took care not to rush Rindy when leaving her mother. They shared a kind farewell.

            As Carol smoked at the table, Therese got their dishes going. Another call came through, and Carol went to answer it. She came back to tell Therese that it was her best friend, Maude, on the line. She took over the dishes from Therese to allow her to go to the phone. Therese took off her apron and tied it around Carol's waist before she went. She sat down at the table and talked to Maude much longer than she had anticipated. After they hung up, she returned to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water and came to find Carol in her pajamas and robe, propped up on pillows, and reading on her bed.

            Therese lay down beside Carol still in her own clothes. Her mind wandered over the conversation she had just had with Maude. Her attention began to adjust and focus on Carol instead of Maude after a minute. She did not want to disturb her reading, and she thought she might go and change for bed.

            "How's Maude?" Carol asked.

            "Oh, having a rough time with Tommy," Therese said.

            "What sort of a rough time?" Carol asked.

            "I mean, I can hardly say I know. He's having a difficult time at work, and he's not taking it out on her or anything. But he's different. She said he feels cold," Therese said.

            Carol made a severe sound.

            "I hardly know what to say to her about it," Therese said. "It's too far from anything I've experienced."

            "I'm sure just listening is helpful," Carol said.

            "Yeah," Therese said. "What have you gotten up to?"

            " _Giovanni's Room_ ," Carol said of her book.

            "Is it good?" Therese asked.

            "Yes," Carol said, "But it's excruciating."

            She closed her book and stretched her back against the pillows.

            "You think you will be able to talk Maude into going after a girl next time?" Carol asked her.

            Therese laughed a little at this.

            "Oh, I don't know. That's not really my place, I don't think," Therese said.

            "She falls for women and ends up with men. She's said so herself. I've heard it more than once myself," Carol said as she put her book aside.

            "I know, but people need to make their own way," Therese said.

            "Maybe she thinks all the good women are taken," Carol said. "You could always just lay one on her and see if that changes anything."

            Therese knew that Carol was only kidding. She would have been the last woman in the world to advise "laying one on" anybody. She turned and gave Carol a suspicious half of a smile. Therese felt a little thrown, as she was not quite sure why Carol was teasing her.

            "That's not really my style. And it couldn’t be anything that I'd like to find changed," Therese said.

            "Well, stick to your own style, of course. You'll end up courting younger women someday," Carol said.

            Therese felt herself make a deep sigh at this. Carol had not said anything like this in a couple of years, but she used to make references like this regularly. Therese tolerated it with a sort of quiet feeling of desperation at first, for whatever reason, and even once wrote Carol the most passionate love letter in response to such a seemingly callous turn of phrase she had made. Then one day, Carol said something like this, and Therese immediately started weeping, quite in earnest. She had always taken this rather personally. Carol looked absolutely shocked. That was years ago now, and Therese knew Carol far better. She was always looking ahead to the future, anticipating things, weighing the likelihood of coming changes in her mind. Therese lived so much in the present, she found this confusing about Carol at times. But she was like this about everything, she knew now.

            As she had waited a moment without giving any response, Carol turned and made a remorseful look. She seemed to have slipped in saying what she had said. But Therese figured that she had never really stopped thinking it and only stopped saying it out loud. She leaned up onto her elbow to bring herself a bit nearer to Carol. She reached out and touched the edges of the opening in her robe, tracing the lines of cloth with her fingertips. Their eyes met before Therese finally spoke.

            "I'm only twenty-five," Therese said to Carol. "I don't pretend to know what's going to happen along the way. Abby says that things change between people, simply because people are always changing. I can't foresee whether you and I will grow more together or grow apart.

"But what I do know is that, you're the love of my life. The way I want you, if there's anything else in my life that even evokes a flicker of those same feelings of longing, I'm going to go all out to try and get it. We could part ways tomorrow, and I would still carry that with me. I think they'll be putting that along with me into my grave.

            "I will always love you, Carol. No matter what all else changes. You do know that, don't you?"

            Carol listened to all this with rapt attention and became visibly affected by Therese's words. She took Therese's face in both her hands to kiss her. The tenderness and passion of their kiss disrupted Therese's thoughts for a moment. She remained close to Carol when their lips parted.

            "Lay off the stuff about other women," Therese said in a flat tone that made Carol laugh a bit.

            "I'm sorry," Carol said and seemed a little embarrassed.

            "That's all right," Therese said.

            They kissed for a while longer, and Therese realized they were going to keep on kissing and remain in bed for the night. She glanced over at Carol's beside table.

            "I think you should stop reading depressing literature about queer relationships," Therese said.

            "After this one," Carol promised with a slight nod towards the book and waited for Therese's response.  

            "Fair enough," Therese conceded with the slightest grin before leaning in to kiss Carol once again.


End file.
